It's not
about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.

Consider this: we are not even 9 days away from May, and have 45,000 plus deaths (as of 21 April) with a rate of increase hovering around 10% per day, which doubles every 7 or 8 days. So we will probably have 100,000 dead by early May ... 200,000 dead by mid-May ... 400,000 by late-May ... perhaps more than a million when all is said and done. And all this with a large percentage (40% ?? probably a whole lot more) of the population having never been exposed to this virus, and various social-distancing/shutdowns being implemented.

Imagine the death toll had that not been the case.

Tuesday, 21 April 2020 at 15h 12m 18s

Evidence, Science, Intelligence-based Information

Enjoy it while it lasts.

A new, unpublished study found that hydroxychloroquine, a drug President Trump has cited as key in fighting coronavirus, has a higher death rate among coronavirus patients compared to those not on the drug.

It's a small study. It's not a peer-reviewed study. The sample was 328 patients. The study was done at the Veteran's Administration Hospital. They gave one group Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin (the anti-biotic). The other group did not receive these medications. There was no change in the need for a ventilator. However, 22% died in the Experimental group, 11.4% died in the Control group. Assuming both samples was 328 divided by 2, that achieves a 1.91 test statistic, which is close to 1.96, the cutoff for a two-tailed 5% Level of Significance.

This makes the 4th recent study. There have also been 3 other studies out of Brazil, France, and Sweden that have been equally as inconclusive. The studies in Brazil and France had people dying of Heart Arrythmia, and in Brazil they stopped the study on account of the deaths. The authorities in Sweden have also given guidance to medical staff not to administer the Hydroxychloroquine treatment.

But when you have a President and his buddies who have invested in manufactures of Hydroxychloroquine ... ?

Tuesday, 21 April 2020 at 8h 48m 53s

Where we are

Monday, 20 April 2020 at 20h 35m 37s

The inimitable John Oliver

Separating the con-artists from the duped, and pointing out the incredulity of stupidity.

Former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines says Trump’s “doubletalk” and self-promotion at the coronavirus briefings are both counterproductive and backfiring, in this interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber.

AND

"The tests are perfect. Just like the call was perfect. The transcript was perfect."
-- Donald Trump

Sunday, 19 April 2020 at 17h 35m 52s

How the US Government handled the 1918-19 pandemic

Although experts are still uncertain, the "spanish" flu probably originated in Kansas at a army camp. It was called the Spanish flu because the information was coming from Spanish newspapers. The Wilson administration, in a misguided effort to keep up war morale, refused to acknowledge the growing pandemic. So despite what our very astute erudite current president might have said, the influenza epidemic of 1918-19 did not originate in Spain.

"All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages" - Benjamin Franklin

Robert Morris was a shipper/merchant out of Philadelphia who also functioned as a banker for the nation during the Revolutionary/Constitutional Period of the United States.

During the Revolutionary War he would purchase supplies for the army/navy on his own account and funded various expeditions to Europe seeking supplies. He was named Superintendent of Finance in 1781, precursor to the Secretary of the Treasury. He was also heavily involved in the financial operations of the nascent United States government. After the Panic of 1797 however all his revenue collapsed and he tried to avoid his creditors for a few months, but eventually he was sued and then imprisoned for debt in Prune Street prison in Philadelphia from February 1798 to August 1801.

The skinny: they destroy the natural Vitamin C when they pasteurize the product and then add synthetic Ascorbic Acid created from corn syrup. However Ascorbic Acid is NOT Vitamin C. It is the shell of the Vitamin C complex package, kind of like the apple peel instead of the whole apple.

Nutrition knowledge is still catching up on all of our misconceptions. There are very few reliable, honest purveyors of nutritional knowledge than Dr. Stan Ekberg.

Saturday, 18 April 2020 at 16h 47m 10s

Modern Monetary Theory

In a challenge to conventional views on modern monetary and fiscal policy, Professor Bill Mitchell of Newcastle University in Australia has emerged as one of the foremost exponents of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a heterodox challenge to the prevailing paradigms which dominate how mainstream economics is taught and economic policy implemented. In his works, and the interview below, Mitchell presents a coherent analysis of how money is created, how it functions in global exchange rate regimes, and how the mystification of the nature of money has constrained governments, and prevented states from acting in the public interest.

Saturday, 18 April 2020 at 12h 19m 41s

Review of various serology studies on COVID

Dr. John Campbell has been doing daily info vids reviewing statistics and discusses scientific papers and studies. Here he reviews serology studies (testing for antibodies) and using the sample to estimate the actual number of people who have contracted COVID.

This large sample is a voluntary response by people responding to an online survey who have means to donate the samples by driving and waiting in a car line to get a prick on their finger. Did these people receive the survey randomly? I would assume Stanford knows what they are doing here, but you have to careful because the people who respond might have larger percentages of people who feel vulnerable to exposure due to their occupation, or did get sick at some point in the past. Hence I'd be very careful directly applying the proportion of those with antibodies in the sample of 3,330 to the entire population of Santa Clara County(1.93 million).

However, I am absolutely sure Stanford took these issues into account when they made their estimates. Here's the next paragraph in the Palo Alto Weekly article:

When adjusted for Santa Clara County's population and demographics, the number of positive results suggests that between 2.49% and 4.16% of the county's 1.93 million residents have had COVID-19.